SMITH: State's medical pot laws a hazy sham

Oh gosh, the compassion and caring that permeated those marijuana nurseries discovered the other day off of Piner Road could be smelled down the block.

Police decided that the cannabis plants in the pots behind a fake wall at a car-stereo shop were a prohibited drug but the plants growing in a building next door were lawful medicine.

Only in California. Everybody who grows marijuana for sale in the state, and that's quickly approaching everybody, is taking advantage of the intentional confusion created by our bizarre sham of a medical-marijuana law.

Its declared intent is to allow "seriously ill" people access to cannabis. That is honorable and humane.

But what percentage of the people walking around with marijuana cards would you estimate have been diagnosed with what any reasonable person would consider a serious illness?

Ten percent? 1 percent? A tenth of a percent? A hundredth?

Regardless, a bunch of people are making piles of money growing or selling a federally controlled substance while hiding behind a green cross and chanting about compassionate medicine.

Pot's murky legality has served to keep its retail price so high that everybody and his brother wants a piece of the action.

High-potency marijuana is cultivated in so many homes that kids have easy access to it. People rent and wreck houses to grow it. People kill for it.

But for the profiteers exploiting the ludicrous state of marijuana in California, that's all just part of the cost of <QA0>

doing business.

DROP THE WRENCH! In a perfect world, "Cops" would be filming in Sebastopol the first time a resident dials 911 to report that a PG&amp;E service technician is at that moment installing a radio wave-emitting SmartMeter in violation of the City Council's new, questionably legal ban.

Imagine the "Bad Boys" theme playing as some poor Sebastopol cops commands the utility tech, "Step away from the electricity meter!"